The next generation

This website went live in February of 2009. That August my first son was born. I spent many days at home with him, collecting artwork as he napped, writing chapter summaries as he drank a bottle or played on the floor. The first couple of years of his life were, for me, largely about him and Harry.

He’s six and a half now. And tonight I read him the first chapter of book one. He’s never seen the movies, has no context at all. He marveled as a cat turned into a professor; his jaw dropped when he heard about a man twice as tall as a normal man and five times as wide; he wondered what on earth the owls were about; he laughed when he heard about a man who could tuck his beard into his belt. He decided the Dursleys did NOT sound like very nice people, and that maybe not-nice-people might be what Muggles are.

I had tears streaming down my face as I finished (“To Harry Potter – the Boy Who Lived!”). It was a moment I’ll never, ever forget. I showed him the pictures on this site. And as he went off to bed, he begged me to tell him the title of chapter two and to promise to read it tomorrow, so he can find out what glass might vanish.

This is what great books are all about. I’m cherishing sharing them with a new generation tonight.

My oldest will be 5 this summer and I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not to start reading Harry Potter to her this year or wait until she’s been through some Kindergarten and “real world experiences” first. But then I worry that someone will say something and take away a bit of the magic. I’m so very happy that your baby had a clean slate for this magical world!

It’s beautiful how you describe his reactions to hearing HP for the first time. I truly loved following this site for the reading and comments people had. Glad to see another HP loving family growing up :)